KIRKUS REVIEW

A memoir of arctic adventure that
goes deeper into self-discovery and finding a home.

“I’ve spent more than half my life
pointed northward, trying to answer private questions about violence and
belonging and cold,” writes Braverman, a dog sledder and journalist whose
frequent, extended visits to Norway and Alaska began from personal
circumstances but soon assumed the significance of a quest to find a place where
she belonged. Her journey from innocence to experience followed the map from
south to north: “While southern Norwegians took pride in their restraint…northerners
were loose and vulgar. They cursed, slurred their words, joked often about sex
and death, and gauged time loosely.” As a teenage foreign exchange student in
Norway who later led dog sled teams for tourists in Alaska, Braverman was
frequently tested by the male-dominated culture, wondering when jokes crossed
the line into something more, whether she was experiencing harassment or it was
just in her head. Though the narrative jumps back and forth,
chronologically and geographically, the voice throughout remains as insightful
and engaging as it is uncertain, from a young woman who is never quite certain
if she is safe, not only from the climate, but from so-called civilization, and
where danger might lie. “The thing was, nothing that had happened to me…was
beyond the normal scope of what happened to women all the time. Some harassment
by an authority figure, a few sexual remarks, pressure from an insistent
boyfriend?” Yet her experience allowed her to recognize what had been wrong all
along, as she found pleasure in sex where she didn’t feel that pressure and
fell in love of her own volition. Her external experiences are
extraordinary in the frigid north that so few have experienced, but it’s what
happens internally that both sets this memoir apart and gives it universal
resonance.

INTERVIEW WITH BLAIR BRAVERMAN

At 69º North, a 40-student Norwegian trade school for dog-sledding and winter survival, Blair Braverman learned how quickly things can go south. One night she and a classmate were forced to sled across Sweden in blackout blizzard conditions. One morning her sleeping space caved in, nearly burying her alive in ...

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